It's the first Bond film not to be based on a Ian
Fleming
novel.
This tenth Bond film (the third Roger Moore entry)
began to move away
from
the previous inventive scripts to become a totally
mindless gadget film
filled with snappy one-liners, gorgeous but lifeless
girls, the usual
well-choreographed
chases, tacky sexual innuendos and exotic locations.
This was also the
first time that a Bond girl was viewed on a more or
less equal footing
with 007 and her story told from her viewpoint.
Director Lewis Gilbert
("Alfie"/"You Only Live Twice"/"Shirley Valentine")
never gets more
than
a witless and mechanically acted escapist film out of
it and it's
overwhelmed
with its cartoonish absurdity and not an ounce of
reality (not even a
little
bit to keep it at least slightly honest). Nevertheless
this lively
crass
artificial formula worked at the box office, as it
became the biggest
Bond
film to date in ticket sales.

Writers Richard Maibaum and Christopher Wood keep
both the
characters
and story as plastic as possible, and make it more
like a parody of an
action film that is all about the props (like a Lotus
car that converts
to an underwater boat), the stunt men and the fancy
set designs. It's a
highly patriotic, flagwaving film, that lays on us
some nifty British
technological
wizardry as the be all and end all in worldly affairs.

007 (Roger Moore) is pulled out of the sack with a
hot babe
in a
ski lodge in the Swis Alps to investigate the
disappearance of two
nuclear
submarines and has to fight his way out of danger as
he's chased down
the
slopes by Russian agents firing at him. In his escape
he kills the
boyfriend
agent of master Russian spy Triple X, Major Anya
Amasova (Barbara
Bach),
who is also asked by her government to investigate the
missing nuclear
submarines. To complete his getaway, Bond makes a
spectacular ski jump
and is aided in landing safely by a Union Jack
parachute.

The two master spies meet in Cairo, where they learn
that
microfilm
of the tracking device responsible for the missing
submarines is being
sold to the highest bidder. The spies stop competing
with each other as
their governments have them now work as a team when
it's learned that
the
men doing the bidding (Nadim Sawalha & Vernon
Dobtcheff) are killed
by a villain they have in common.

The villain is a recluse megalomaniac shipping
tycoon named
Stromberg
(Curt Jurgens), who lives in a high-tech underwater
hideout in Sardinia
and who uses the indestructible robotic-like
7-foot-2-inch,
steel-toothed
human monster called Jaws (Richard Kiel) to kill the
agents and he is
seen
throughout chasing Bond down (which gave the film its
most enjoyable
nonsensical
moments).

At the climax it's up to Bond to save the world, as
Amasova
is kidnapped
by Stromberg. Meanwhile Bond is held prisoner by
Stromberg's
submarine-eating
oil tanker, the Liparus. Bond now must use his wits to
battle
Stromberg's
henchman and foil his plans to start WW III by nuking
New York City and
Moscow, as the madman believes civilization is too
corrupt to be
allowed
to exist and he plans to start a New World undersea.
After Bond
re-targets
the missiles to destroy each other, he daringly
rescues Amasova from
Stromberg's
hideout. It ends with Bond in bed with the major in
full view of their
bosses and his schoolboy cheeky quip is "that he's
holding up his end
for
England."

Carly Simon's rendition of "Nobody Does It Better"
is one
of the
more memorable Bond theme songs.